The invention relates to a QUADRANGULAR STEPPED MOSAIC BREAKWATER, a structure intended to create sheltered areas and/or spaces for nautical uses (harbours, jetties, etc.) residential uses (lalcustrine villaes, artificial islands, etc.), recreational uses (swimming pools, marine parks, aquaparks, etc.) as well as for the protection and/or improvement of the shores of natural (seas, lakes, lagoons, estuaaries, rivers, etc.) and/or artificial bodies of water (reservoirs, pools, canals, etc.) as a shore protection, training, support, shelter or bearing structure acting, if necessary, on the hydraulics of the shore (currents, wind waves, wake waves, etc.) and/or on the geomorphological processes: erosion, transport and/or deposit.
Offshore, bank protection, training, support, shelter and/or bearing structures are today built as breakwaters, jetties, which maybe natural or artificial rubblemound or monolithic. The latter may be vertical or mixed.
All these types of conventional breakwaters, jetties, are designed to specifically fulfil the function for which they are intended: signposting support, recreational facility support, etc., shore protection, training, support, shelter and/or bearing structures and, in certain cases, vessel berthing. They are dimensioned to withstand mainly the action of wind waves, waves, currents, etc. and, if necessary, berthing and/or mooring stresses. Their morphology has been specifically orientated towards these functions but other possible uses and/or requirements, recreational, aesthetic and environmental, for example, which are so highly valued today, have been disregarded.
Conventional, vertical and mixed, monolithic breakwaters in particular preset various additional disadvantages:
They are highly reflective for gravity waves (wind waves, wake waves, etc.) which greatly increase choppiness, crossed wave actions, possible resonances, etc. making it difficult to use the water surfaces to advantage and, at the same time, preventing beach stability.
They are relatively unstable, since on being buil with a quasi-rectangular superstructure, their overturning moment is not the optimum.